


Cast No Shadow

by quondam



Category: Mass Effect
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-21 12:17:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9548696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quondam/pseuds/quondam
Summary: Before Garrus can return to Palaven after the Reaper invasion, he's confronted by a teenage girl claiming to be Shepard's daughter.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> An answer to a very old prompt from the kinkmeme: Earthborn!F!Shepard got pregnant before she joined the Alliance. She gave the baby up for adoption, and never knew what happened to him/her, and told no one (or no one on the Normandy, at least).
> 
> After the final battle Shep is MIA, presumed dead. Shep!child, who is now a teenager (or would it be older than that?) has been orphaned by the battle, and is looking for their birth mother, and somehow finds Garrus (and the Normandy crew, if you like) and, over time, they bond.
> 
> http://masseffectkink.livejournal.com/4037.html?thread=11720645#t11720645

Twenty-nine days since the end of the war, and the focus was on containment. Sure, there were smaller ideas like distributing food and medical supplies to the millions of new refugees—both human and alien alike—and maybe the Alliance was even _telling_ the people that their priorities lie with caring for all the victims, but for those with half a brain, they knew what the real message was. Containment. Keep the large groups of starving, homeless, injured people from reacting too loudly and riling up the other ones too buried deep in their misery for the time being. Control what they do and don’t see, what they do and don’t eat, and for god’s sake, keep them in one damn place to isolate the chaos.

It was a lesson that Charlie knew all too well in the month since things had gone from outlook-not-so-good to outlook-only-slightly-better. Instead of the Reapers in the skies, their carcasses now littered the flesh of the earth across the globe, their hulking masses peeking from beyond tree tops and the cavities of downed buildings in the major city centers. Out in the countryside, things were better, and the occurrences of the derelict monstrosities grew less and less in direct correlation to the distance one got from where any significant numbers of population had been before. The cities had been crowded then, but now farmhouses and summer chateaus out by lakes and mountains held the remainders of families and orphaned children.

There would be many orphans on earth because of how long the humans had held off against the Reapers. With more casualties came the need for more civilians to jump into the fight, fathers and mothers leaving their children behind somewhere they hoped their offspring would remain safe, silently praying they’d be able to return to watch their sons and daughters grow up some day. But most of those parents, they wouldn’t ever be coming back. Just like hers, Charlie allowed herself to think for half a second, before banishing that line of thinking away to the recesses of her mind where she stored all the horrible things she’d both seen and endured over the last few months. An orphan, that was what anyone else would call her, but it wasn’t what she’d let herself be.

Charlie rolled her shoulder against the heavy weight of her small duffel bag’s strap, ignoring the familiar soreness and ache that had worked itself into her muscles. It was a constant to her now, always there but her consciousness only aware of it in certain situations, like when she woke up in the morning or actually found not only the time, but food, to sit down and have a bite to eat of whatever cold sustenance was afforded to her. When she’d started this wayward trip, her bag had been fuller then, with a few more pieces of clothing before they’d gotten ruined and somewhere upwards of half a case of ration bars. She had a feeling her digestive system would never be the same after the amount of tasteless cardboard she’d been forced to eat in order to keep herself going.

The man beside her brushed into her harshly, and as an innate response, Charlie reached up, gripping the shoulder strap of her bag a little tighter to her. He leered, corner of his mouth lifted in a particularly untrustworthy grimace. She steeled herself for the moment, just as she’d done hundreds of times before while fending for herself, pushing the little girl aside to bring forth the woman Charlie had unceremoniously been forced to become. There were dozens of others around them, but she knew from experience that if it came to a scuffle, few of them would help, so she went with what she knew and let the left side of her jacket fall open, exposing the gun at her hip. It was a bold move, one that had its flaws, but her heartbeat resumed normal function again when she saw the man retreat. He’d have to make another person his unwilling victim.

The main gate of the Alliance’s London headquarters came into view just as the sting of blisters hit the soles of her feet. The boots she was wearing, they hadn’t been hers and were a size too large, but they’d become a welcome replacement to the flimsy little things she’d been in the day she’d left her home behind. She veered off the main pack of bodies that gathered at the checkpoint, instead following the length of the high-rising fence. She hadn’t gone more than a hundred feet off when a soldier from the bird’s nest security perch called down to her, rifle raised.

“Gate’s back that way,” he shouted.

“Crowded,” she yelled, keeping things short. “Figured I’d give another entrance a try.”

“They’re closed,” he responded, not for a second lowering his weapon. He jerked the barrel of the gun back towards the direction she’d come from. “Go with the others.”

Charlie cursed under her breath, but knew better than to linger and put up a fight with a gun pointed at her chest. Unlike most other things, _that_ wasn’t a newly learned trait. She nodded and turned back towards the growing line of queuing bodies to wait her turn.

The overhead lights were bright and blinding, especially in the darkness of the night, an effect she was sure was done with purpose rather than coincidence, allowing the working soldiers to stare down each and every person who tried to gain access to the military base. Charlie fished her hand through the inner pocket of her coat, pulling out the ID and data cards she’d presented similarly at all the other shuttle ports and camps she’d passed through, but the soldier on duty merely grunted at her presentation.

“Step into the scan,” he said.

She eyed the machinery set forward in the checkpoint, the exact piece of equipment she’d been hoping and trying to avoid through an alternate entrance. In the heat of battle and war, there hadn’t been time for protocol and proper security clearance. If you had a weapon, you could fight the Reapers. That was all that had mattered then. But now, however remotely, things were returning back to some military-state version of normal.

“These haven’t been a trouble before,” she started, and did her best impression of all the authority figures she’d ever crossed with before. _If you act it,_ her mother had told her in some of her final words, _they’ll believe it_. Charlie pushed the identification card back towards the soldier, this time with some force.

The man in uniform took her papers, looking from the image presented to the person before him skeptically. He folded it closed and handed it back, and repeated his earlier gesture of tilting his head towards the machine and guards ahead of them. “Not my problem. No one comes in or out without a scan, not even the _admirals_ , “ he paused and swallowed, a glance given back before adding, “Ma’am.”

Charlie pursed her lips, her heart pounding inside her deceptively still body, as she set her focus back on the checkpoint a few feet ahead. A man in uniform was standing patiently as he waited for a soldier to motion him forward once verification had been put through. Another was at the next machine, handcuffs fitted around her wrists, arms strained painfully backwards as a pair of soldiers led her off, even as the tears fell down her cheeks and shouted pleas grew louder. No one dared to intervene.

A push at her back from another civilian encouraged her forward, and with the image of the other woman in custody burned into her mind, Charlie stepped into the passageway of the scanner, bag and all. She shut her eyes tight, throat dry as she tried to swallow, choking back the growing fear that for all her mother’s last ditch efforts at seeing her daughter protected, she’d be another name on a list of people buried deep inside some military prison facility. Of course, there was never any proof that such places existed, but it was the same rumor she’d heard over the last few weeks as she moved around. Don’t make too much proverbial noise, everyone said, or you’d end up somewhere that would rival the treatment the Reapers had given the general population in the days their strategy went from merely ‘destroying every living thing’ to ‘collecting bodies.’

There was no clink of handcuffs opening, though, and no footsteps of extra infantry come to haul her away, just the polite clearing of a throat from the junior officer at a desk ahead of her, waving her on. She did as ordered.

“Sorry for the inconvenience, Captain Hendricks,” he said apologetically and with the kind of deference reserved for those in positions of higher rank, “we’ve had to be careful over the last few weeks.”

Charlie just nodded, trying to not act too surprised by his calm demeanor.

“Long way from New York,” he continued on as he read the information off of the screen, “though I imagine it looks just about as bad as it does here in London.”

Standing a little straighter, she coughed into the back of her fist. “It does.”

“All right, ma’am,” he said with a nod of his head, “you should be clear to be on Alliance property. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Yes,” she said, and slid the bag from her shoulder, letting it hit the ground. “I’m looking for Garrus Vakarian.”

 

  
  
Charlie hadn’t thought much about what she’d do when she finally reached the Alliance’s base in London. The plan itself, rudimentary as it was, had been farfetched enough that she’d spared no thought for what she’d do once she got there, just that it was imperative that she get there at all.

In her head, Charlie could still hear her mother’s voice.

_“Find Shepard,” she’d said, fingers gripping hard into her daughter’s upper arms. “If something happens to me, find Shepard. Find anyone who can take you to her, Charlie. She’ll keep you safe.”_

That had been the last time she’d seen her, and given what her mother had left her with—a pistol and a forged set of identification and data cards proclaiming her to be a one Captain Andrea Hendricks of the Systems Alliance—Charlie understood her mother, like her father, would not be coming back.

And so when the war had ended, when the threat of Reapers had been lifted only to be replaced by the threat of the chaos of the common man and government, Charlie had done as her mother had told her. She would head to London, where she’d last heard Commander Shepard had convened before the final push. Only, when she’d touched down in England, the mourning had already begun. Commander Shepard was dead—perished on the Citadel.

The tears she’d held back when she realized her mother was gone, and before that, her father, the anger she’d reined in at all the horror she’d witnessed and lived… it came to her all at once that day, left her knuckles bloody as she thrashed her fists against brick and stone of the building nearest to her, screaming through her tears. She’d had nothing left when she’d left New York, nothing but the hope of finding a woman that was as much a stranger to her as she was to anyone else. But it was hope nonetheless, and Charlie had clung to it during her nights when she slept curled around the bag that held her only belongings, and she’d clung to it during the days when she’d dragged her body in what she hoped was the right direction.

To lose that… Charlie had half-starved herself in her mad grief, determined to let herself simply fade away like so many had since the war had begun. Only when she’d caught word that the Normandy had returned from its weeks lost amongst the stars, and then seen a glimpse of a video feed of those on board being welcomed home in London, had Charlie found the strength to keep going once more. Maybe Shepard was gone, but those that had called themselves her friends weren’t. It wasn’t much to go on, but Charlie had once again started walking.

The officer she’d spoken to hadn’t been able to give her much information on Garrus’ whereabouts, other than he hadn’t yet left. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and so Charlie had started to make her rounds, doing her best to fly under the radar rather than draw anymore attention to herself than she already had. The scan she’d been forced into had left her rattled and though it had worked once, she preferred not to press her luck on the off chance it had been a fluke. Her mother had mentioned it once, ages ago, about seeking a favor from a friend for Charlotte in case the worst happened, but had never brought it up again between then and her final departure. Maybe her mother had left her with one last gift.

There was word of hot food, showers, and even barracks to take a load off, and though she desperately wanted to fill her belly and find some sleep, she didn’t dare risk that the handful of hours she caught happened to be the ones in which her last hope slipped through her fingers. Her stomach had stopped rumbling weeks, maybe even months ago, and that sharp pain of hunger had become an old friend, reminding her that she lived when so many others didn’t.

She was ashamed to admit that every turian she passed seemed just like all the others, save for the identifying facial markings some of them war. Though Charlie was familiar enough with all the races of the galaxy just as any of her peers were, she’d never left Earth proper, only dreamt of it. Her father, more than once or twice, had promised they would see the Citadel someday, and for years it had been the dream she longed for—to see the stars and other planets. Now, anyone who had been on the Citadel when it had sealed off and finally destroyed… they were gone. Including Shepard.

None had the markings she was looking for, though—the deep blue pattern she’d memorized from photographs and video, committing to memory as a symbol of her salvation over the last few days. And so when Charlie caught sight of the Alliance’s makeshift dockyard, and the one familiar, iconic even, vessel that skirted the edge of it… she took it as a sign to stop and take a breath. Her fingers grasped the chainlink fence, and Charlie pressed her face against it, studying the Normandy from afar.

_That’s the ship. That was Shepard’s ship. I was so close._

Tears fell as she wept with her eyes open, unwilling to stop looking, even for a second, at the damaged hull of the Normandy.

_It’s more beautiful than I thought it would be._

“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” From beside her, a flanged voice asked, echoing the thought in her head. The fence creaked as her new companion leaned into it as well, mimicking her in pose. “Seen better days, but still got the fight in her.”

Charlie didn’t care who she was supposed to be in that moment, didn’t care if Captain Hendricks was the type of woman who cried in front of strangers or not, didn’t care if she was the type of woman who would even cry at all.

“Will she fly again?” She barely got out, voice a whisper.

“Yeah,” the turian said wistfully. “This isn’t the end of her story, not by a long shot.”

Maybe it was exactly what she needed to hear. Charlie let go of the fence, wiping the dirt and tears from her cheeks, and stepped back, prepared to resume her search once again.

“Wait.” The turian said suddenly, and Charlie looked back to him on instinct, to find his eyes locked on her, staring. “You…”

She knew those markings—if not the shape, then the color at least. Charlie lurched forward, bag sliding from her shoulder, fingers grasping greedily at any piece of his armor she could find purchase on. “Garrus.”

Whether or not he said anything audible in that first moment of contact between them, Charlie would never know. She was lost to it, senses momentarily sacrificed for the sake of staying on her feet at all. What she did recall was that at some point his hands were pushing her off, pushing her back, away. Garrus held her at arms’ length, hunched forward as he took her in, studying.

“I swear…” he started, but never finished, shaking his head. “Sorry—you just look like—“

“Like who?” Charlie questioned, hoping to draw him out.

He blinked twice, letting her go, straightening up and stiffening. “Someone.”

She’d always wondered if she looked like the woman who had given birth to her. A few pictures of Shepard were all they’d ever given her as she’d grown older. She wondered if her hair was as thick or the same shade, if their eyes had the same flecks of color to them, if the thick muscular thighs that always touched but were so very strong came from that woman. When Shepard had appeared on the news reports those years ago, however, she’d gotten some of those answers. That slope to her nose—that was Shepard’s. Cheekbones, hair, even that way she raised one corner of her mouth when trying not to laugh… that had come from the woman she didn’t know.

“No,” he said suddenly, and fingered the long length of hair that was swept over her shoulder. What joy and life he’d had for the moment in talking about that ship had gone out of him. Left him hollow. “Too long.”

Charlie nearly flinched at his touch. It had been so very long since someone had touched her with any manner of kindness. Kindness was gone from the world these days.

“Like who?” She asked again, and when he didn’t respond, she did the work for him. “Like Shepard?”

Garrus’ eyes darted back to her, a soft squint. It scared her, the kind of look she sometimes saw in wild animals when deciding to run or pounce. But just like that, Garrus eased, weight shifting on his heels.

“I’m losing my mind. Seeing her everywhere.” He took Charlie’s stance from before, leaning into the chainlink fence, a careful eye on the battered hull of the Normandy. “Again,” he spoke softer, to himself as though he were alone. “Only this time she doesn’t come back.”

It felt too intimate almost, like the time she’d caught her father crying years earlier after his mother had passed. Seeing someone that was supposed to be so strong break down like that…

“What was she like?”

It was a matter of curiosity for her, to know any details about the woman she hadn’t known at all. She’d have been unlikely to admit at the time how many late nights she’d spent reading news articles on the net, even scouring for gossip, regarding the late commander. There’d been a glut of it when she’d reappeared on the scene after her ship had exploded over that ice planet. Her parents had found out of course, just what she was doing with her time, when she had been equal parts irritable and betrayed by the word that Shepard had abandoned the Alliance for Cerberus.

There was only so much one could learn from outside sources, however. Only so much one could glean from interviews with canned answers and forced smiles.

“Terrifying.” Garrus laughed for half a breath. “When I first met her, I never knew what side of her I was going to get on any given day. Terrifying Shepard, or the other side of the same credit chit that told jokes so dirty they’d make a krogan blush, that would have your back in public even if you were wrong, that was the kindest and most honest version of herself when she was on hour thirty without sleep or stims.”

Loyal, that much she’d been able to infer on her own. Still, it made her happy to hear it. Maybe she could be cut from the same cloth as that woman.

“She’d never let anyone else know it, but she was soft, too.” With that, Garrus sagged against the fence, his voice gentler, warmer, with an intimate affection. “Settled for a pet hamster because she couldn’t get a cat. Always talked about all the hobbies she couldn’t wait to have when all this was over—something about a garden mostly. Loved spicy food, or at least loved pretending she did and then bearing through it so she didn’t look like a wimp. Cried more than once or twice—but don’t tell anyone I said that, or she really will come back to life to punish me for saying so.”

They stood in silence after that, and while Charlie knew very much what was on her mind, she wished for a glimpse into the mind of the turian beside her. Across an ocean she’d traveled—a distance that had once upon a time not been much of a feat—to find a sanctuary in Shepard. That dream had died along with all the rest she’d had: attending a university, taking a trip to the stars for the first time with the parents who had promised her so, even the thought of just seeing her family together again. Where she went from there if she chose not to take the risk, she didn’t know.

Tears coated her eyes, threatening to spill. Her hands folded into fists, dull nails digging into the callused skin of her palms just enough to border on pain and leave their mark behind. Charlie shifted the bag off her shoulder, strap looped through the crook of one arm as she rifled through it.

Garrus peeked over his shoulder at the stranger.

“I’ve something—“ She rushed, and even in her periphery she understood Garrus’ behavior to be suspicious. “Something to show you.”

He took at her once again, like he was seeing her for the first time, head cocked slightly to the side. “Who are you?”

“If you’d just…” But the bag slipped from her hold just as she pried the object in question from a slim pocket on the bag’s interior.

The sudden movement left Garrus reacting on a soldier’s instinct, grabbing hard at her wrist as though it would stop an enemy from drawing a gun, tossing an explosive canister. Charlie just yelped in pain and froze, those tears spilled finally more from shock than anything else. Still, she held tight onto what she’d sought out: a worn photograph of a girl not so very unlike herself in appearance and age, holding a baby of only a few weeks old.  
Charlie knew the moment Garrus saw it by the ease of pressure on her wrist.

“Shepard, she was my mother. The one who gave birth to me, I mean. Not my mother. That was someone else. That was…“

She offered the photograph and he took it in both hands, his breathing going unsteady, labored.

Garrus offered nothing in response, but reached for Charlie’s bag where it sat on the floor and slipped the strap over his shoulder with ease. His head jerked in the opposite direction. “Come on,” he said, “you shouldn’t be out here alone.”

 

  
  
_Out here alone._ She had wanted to laugh when he’d said that, wanted to say that inside those Alliance walls was the safest she’d felt in the better part of a year. She didn’t, though, and had followed him in silence through the network of alleyways and roads crafted since the reapers went out. In the end, they’d wound up on the top floor above what she could tell used to be a pub, the rear windows overlooking the shipyard that held the Normandy.

There was little more to the small flat than a couple of rooms crafted into the gables and dormers of the roof, most parts of the ceiling hanging too low for her turian companion. The original furniture was still there, in fact nearly everything there seemed original except the modifications that had been made to the home terminal. Those, with cables and wires strewn about, were certainly not stock parts.

“There’s hot water in…” Garrus checked his omni-tool, “thirty minutes, usually. Sometimes not. But you can try your luck.”

Hot water had been a bit of an overstatement, as it turned out, but she’d make not a single complaint. There’d even been a small piece of what had formerly been a larger bar of soap in the corner of the tub’s edge and watching the dirty water rinse down the drain was cathartic. She looked an entirely different person when she wiped her hand across the mirror afterwards to remove the steam.

With what little water pressure remained, she rinsed her clothes in the bottom of the tub with the chunk of soap, and hung them to dry across the bathroom’s fixtures after they were rung out. She was drying her hair when she stepped from the bathroom, unsurprised to find Garrus hunched over the terminal he’d previously hacked.

Charlie took a seat on the couch, digging through her bag for a pair of socks to pull on her feet.  She found them easily, but the contents of her bag had been tossed, out of what usual order she tried to keep it in.

“I went through your things,” he admitted readily, swiveling his seat halfway around to her. He touched his talons to the old Carnifex sitting on his desk, then the data card. “Even I can tell you’re nowhere near old enough to be in the military, especially not the rank you’ve got listed. So you better start talking before I decide everything you’ve already told me is a lie.”

She chewed her lower lip, tears beginning to come to her. “I—“ There was no mercy to be found in his eyes, not at the moment, try as she might to find it. “She—that woman—she was a friend of my mother’s that went missing when the reapers first… first arrived. My mother was a police officer, a detective. She worked for the commissioner back in New York.”

“That doesn’t explain why your picture is on it, or why the DNA scan associated with it was wiped and changed awhile back.”

There was always a paper trail, so to speak, something that someone could find if they looked hard enough.

“We fled the city when everything happened at first, but she went back to help—to fight—and left me behind. She gave that to me,” Charlie’s voice cracked, and it was the first moment she saw Garrus’ hard exterior waver, the plates around his eyes relaxing and softening his expression like a person’s eyebrows would. “Told me that if I needed to, I should use it to get out. She said I could use it to slip in with some of the Alliance, hop on a shuttle.”

“Where did she expect you to go?”

Charlie opened her hands, nothing in them. “Anywhere else. She told me to try to find Shepard.”

The photograph was back in his hands, a talon rubbing over the image. She’d done that before herself, like the heat of her hand could somehow warm the memory back to life.

“I know I’m too late, but I don’t know where else to go anymore.” He gave no reply. Charlie shifted on the couch, slightly closer to where he was. Garrus looked up at her movement.

“I don’t even know your name.”

She reached out to him, hands upturned in a sign of innocent offering, and flipped the picture over. On the back in fading pen, was both her and her biological mother’s name, dated 2171.

“Charlotte,” he said, like it was the first time he’d heard the name, and perhaps it was.

“Charlie, everyone always called me Charlie.”

His head bobbed in ascent, and he returned the picture to photo side up. “I never imagined Shepard could be that young,” Garrus said with a quiet laugh, “it’s hard to remember she had a whole other life before I met her.” There was a sudden lightness to the conversation, and though the tension wasn’t gone by any means, she at least allowed herself to ease back into the couch, pulling her legs up with her. She curled her arms around them, fingers worrying at the fabric of her pants.

“She was seventeen there. I think just turned seventeen by time I was born.”

“Is this the only picture you have together?”

“There were more, a couple I think, but where those are now… probably ash, for all I know. My mother had met her back in New York, something to do with a case she was working at the time. They adopted me from her when I was born and helped her get back on her feet, set her up with what she needed to join the Alliance. At least, that’s the story they always told me. I’m old enough now to know there was more to it than just that.”

“Did you ever see her again?”

Charlie shook her head. “No. She stayed with them for awhile when I was a baby, but when she left… she left. I don’t have some secret stack of letters from her hidden away somewhere like in the vids. For awhile I hoped my mother was just keeping them for me when I got older. I mean, it was never a secret that I was adopted. I knew her name, I knew she wasn’t ready to be a mother, I knew—know—it was the right thing to do. But until a couple years ago when her name showed up in the news… she was a ghost to me.”

Garrus leaned back in his chair, listening. He reminded her of her mother, the way she watched and listened, reading between the lines for the whole story. It had always been impossible to lie to her.

“I used to stay up half the night reading about her, what she was doing. I wanted to know anything and everything about her, but when she abandoned the Alliance and joined Cerberus, faked her own death—“

“She _didn’t_ ,” he said abruptly, and Charlie nearly jumped in place at the tone of his voice. “Hard as it is to believe—she _did_ die back then.”

“That isn’t—“

“I’m telling you the truth, kid. She died and horrible things were done to bring her back.”

There were always rumors of fringe science, talk of clones and the kind of research that was illegal throughout the galaxy. But to bring back someone from the dead… her chest clenched at the thought. If they could bring back Shepard than if they found her mother or father someone could… Charlie shut her eyes, hard as she could, to try to stop the tears from coming. She buried her face in her knees and pulled them tighter against her.

The desk chair rolled and a hand touched her shoulder, squeezing.

“You’ve got to be tired, maybe you should head to bed.”

“No,” she sniffed, wiping her cheeks and red rimmed eyes across her sleeve, “not yet.”

“Yes,” he countered with a nod of his head. “There was a time when tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed, but Shepard died so we could go to sleep and pick up the next day and every day after where we left off. So for tonight: sleep.”

His palm pressed to her cheek, a simple gesture that warmed her more than that shower ever could. He left the room not a moment later, retiring to the bedroom and leaving her with the couch. She wasn’t alone, not by a long shot, but it didn’t make sleep any easier.

 

  
  
It was the smell of food that woke her the next morning. Not the faint, dull chemical scent of dried rations she’d survived off of for months now, but actual food. Someone was cooking.

She followed her nose to one room over, and there were sounds to accompany the scent, too: a wooden spoon circling around a pan of some sort, the sizzle and hiss of something frying up. Sun crept through the window, warming her as she passed, and all of it together crafted a familiarity of sensation unique to her childhood. Charlie knew it wasn’t real—knew it was her senses playing tricks on her—but still some part of her expected to find her father in the kitchen as he usually was on a weekend morning, frying a couple eggs while toast browned.

Her father wasn’t there, of course, instead it was the turian she’d only barely been introduced to the night before. He moved scrambled eggs around in a copper pan and Charlie took a seat at the nearby counter, watching. Her stomach growled and mouth watered.

Garrus looked up only just slightly, catching her in his peripheral vision.

“They’re powdered,” he answered, and tipped the contents of the pan onto a chipped plate on the counter top before sliding it in front of her.

“What about you?” Charlie asked, but she already had the fork in hand, ready for her first taste. It was hot and heaven, all in one bite.

“I already ate.”

He cleaned as she devoured it, and though her attention was not to be pulled from the meal before her, she occasionally spied a glance he’d give her, a reserved smile accompanying his features.

“I cooked for Shepard sometimes,” Garrus finally said when she was scraping the smallest bits off her plate with her fork. He leaned against the edge of the stove, arms crossed. “When she missed a meal with the crew.”

“It was good,” she offered, a bob of her head. “I haven’t eaten anything hot in weeks. Thank you.”

She watched as he took her plate, rinsing and drying it before replacing it into a bare cupboard with only a few other items. He took care, like the owners would someday be back, counting pieces of missing china while the rest of the world around them was in crumbles. There was a gentleness to him, something she hadn’t seen in the few others of his species she’d met only in passing. An unexpected gentleness, however, didn’t translate to exactly what she’d been seeking out on this journey. A foolish wish, she knew.

He vacated the room without a word, just the sound of his heavy footfalls fading away as he moved through the apartment. Charlie gave him a few minute’s head start before she followed, not wanting to seem a pest that was always at his heels in the tiny flat. The living room was empty by time she got there and quickly she set about to gather her just barely dampened clothing from the bathroom. She changed there, then reemerged, tucking away what was leftover into her bag.

The couch was still haphazardly spread in the blankets from the night before and she quickly took them at hand, folding them and replacing them in a neat stack on a single cushion. A silent thank you, she hoped it said. And with that, Charlie toed her boots on, slung her bag over her shoulder, and headed for the door.  
  
She was a block and a half away, following the perimeter of the fence that contained the large swathe of land the Normandy was in, when she heard those same footfalls behind her. Louder now, a quick staccato beat as they moved to catch up with her.

“Hey!” Garrus shouted “Stop!”

She continued on, steeling herself, not looking back.

“Where are you going?”

It was his hand on her shoulder that caused her hurried pace to finally halt, and though she’d hoped for some biting remark or quip she imagined Shepard would have had, she had nothing. She couldn’t even look him in the eye.

“Did I do something?” He questioned, and there was an insecurity to his voice, a wavering in the natural flange.

“I need to get going,” she said, head shaking, lips pursed. “I need to figure out what I’m going to do now.”

“Now?”

“Shepard—she—she’s dead.”

From the edge of her periphery, she caught the way he stiffened at that word, like it was presented to him for the first time. Charlie was even prepared for his denial, but then he spoke, solemn. “Yes. But you knew that before you got here and you came anyway.”

“I was stupid!” She shouted suddenly, turning from him. “I thought I’d get here and it’d be okay. Some miracle. But it’s just as bad here as everywhere else and I’m just as much an orphan as I was two months ago. I don’t know—“ Tears came to her again but she tried to stifle them and hide them. She had never been much of a crier in her whole life as she’d done in the last year. Stress, trauma, they’d say. Most of those tears she’d shone only late at night when there wasn’t another soul nearby to hear. And yet, this stranger of another species had seen more than almost anyone in not even a full rotation of the Earth.

“Hey, hey,” he repeated, calmer now, and took her into his arms. It wasn’t foreign or awkward, and Charlie, she didn’t fight when he squeezed her tight. “I’m—“ Garrus stopped, as if the words he were about to say surprised even him, but he soldiered on, “—I’m going to take care of you.”

Words flooded her head: a rejection of the offer, a scoff at empty promises. None came, however, and instead she just dug her fingers into the plates of his armor, pulling herself even closer.

They stayed like that for some time, her cries growing quieter and cheeks growing drier, and somewhere at the end, she felt Garrus nuzzle his mandible to the top of her head.

“I’m sorry,” he was the first to speak as they gradually pulled away, “I haven’t exactly been welcoming.”

“No… I, I understand.”

“I meant what I said,” Garrus reaffirmed. “Shepard would want me to take care of you.”

She wanted to say that she knew Shepard would want that as well, but Charlie truly didn’t know what Shepard would or wouldn’t want. All those things she’d read about her birth mother, maybe Charlie had just seen what she’d wanted to. Maybe she’d ignored the things she didn’t want to imagine in the woman that had given birth to her. But a woman that fought until the end to save not only her species but those across the galaxy, who had inspired loyalty from even just the one person in front of her… that had to count for something, didn’t it?

“You don’t…” Charlie didn’t have the heart to finish the statement.

“I don’t have to,” he agreed, then gently chucked her under the chin, “but I want to.”

Charlie nodded and reached for the strap of her bag, tugging it securely back into proper place on her shoulder. She fell into pace beside Garrus as they began the return trip, following the fence.

“I’ve got a ground rule,” he said after half the journey’s silence. “Just one.”

It was the least she could oblige him. “Alright.”

Garrus came to a stop and turned back in her direction. “We’re honest with each other. The good, the bad, everything. I don’t care if you lie to anyone else, just not to me. I’ll give you the same courtesy.” He offered her a hand.

She took it, grip firm.

His mandibles flickered in a bit of a smile before he turned towards the fence, the view once again of the Normandy where it sat dormant in the dock yard. In daylight, it was even bigger than it had seemed the night before.

“Do you want to see where she lived?”

Charlie couldn’t imagine anything she wanted more.


	2. Chapter 2

She always imagined that the ships that traveled through space—deep through the far reaches—would have walls so thick it left little for the inside. Maybe she never paid enough attention during science class, or perhaps it was one too many older sci-fi flicks she’d seen that had done her wrong, but the first thing she’d been startled by on the Normandy was just how big it actually was inside.

It wasn’t like a plane or a submarine, certainly nothing like those first ship iconic ships still displayed in museums that had been used two centuries earlier to propel humans into space. No, it was more like a boat, a little floating world. There were more floors than she thought there would be, more rooms interconnected, more amenities than she knew existed on an Alliance frigate. True that it also had more money poured into it than most other standard vessels—she’d done her research and near obsessively memorized facts and figures—but it was breathtaking.

Charlie wondered what it was like the first time Shepard had set eyes on it, in any of its iterations. Had the breath left Shepard’s lungs just as it did to hers?

“Why weren’t you staying here?” She’d asked when they’d first come aboard, lights flickering on, ship humming back to life.

He’d brought what few things he’d had in that apartment with him, just as she had done with her rucksack. Garrus gave pause to the question with a tilt of his head. “Everyone else left… I didn’t want to be alone.”

She didn’t point out that it seemed as if he’d mostly spent his time alone anyway, but she understood the feeling. There were ghosts here, just as she was sure there would be in her family’s place back in New York if it remained at all.

There’d been a brief tour after that of all the main components of the ship that were mostly split into places she was allowed to roam and those she was not. Though the ship had been cleared of any intel logged on board, it was better not to risk a court martial for either of them, he’d said. Charlie had spent that first day learning the layout of the ship by way of practice: walking the length of each hall so many times she swore she could do it in the dark, running her hands along the railing in the CIC where Garrus said a map of the galaxy was usually shown, even hearing her voice echo off the walls in the large and empty holding bay on the bottom floor.

It was hard to imagine the place once bustling and alive, full to the brim with crew members and supplies as stark as it was now, but she let herself imagine nonetheless. Garrus had given her free reign of one of the bunk rooms, and Charlie had set her still packed bag upon a lower mattress and taken the top one for herself.

_This was someone’s home once. This was where they lived._

She looked for any small piece that showed someone had existed there once, but all that remained were stray bits of tape to the wall and ceiling where mementos and photos had once been kept and then pulled from. Charlie wondered if that person was still alive now or if someone else had removed the personal effects from this spot, clearing way for a new body in the future. Whenever that would be.

From her pack, she took the only reminders of her parents she had left, and strategically using the tape that was left behind, placed her own photographs to the roof of her bunk. In one, she posed with her father for her first day of school many years ago. Another, she and her mother embraced at a holiday party two years earlier. Charlie hesitated with the last photo, that of her and Shepard. Did it deserve to hang there with the rest? Shepard hadn’t raised her, had offered her nothing except the chance to have been born.

She tucked the photo behind the one of her and her mother and left her bunk behind in favor of exploration.

Garrus found her in the cockpit, reclining in the pilot’s chair. The dash was powered down, but its breadth still remained intimidating.

“We had a pilot named Joker—Jeff,” he said, standing beside her like he was overlooking the galaxy instead of a glorified parking lot. “Was with Shepard from her first day on the SR-1.”

“Had?” She asked, tensing in the seat she sat, then carefully looked at the arm rests and cushions to spy any blood.

He caught her out of the corner of his eye, but made no obvious move of his head. “He’s still alive,” Charlie stilled, cheeks reddened at being caught. “Shepard died saving his life that first time.”

Despite his claims and convictions, doubt still filled her at the very notion of having to clarify which death of Shepard’s he meant.

“Were you there?”

Garrus swallowed, and the softer skin of his throat bobbed as he took a hard swallow. “No. I wasn’t, but I should’ve been. If I had…” He never finished the thought and instead stepped around her, hitting a sequence of buttons on a control panel nearby. She nearly jumped out of her seat as the cockpit, lights and sounds and all, came to life before her.

The glow of each screen reflected back on her skin, like she was one with the computer itself. Charlie reached forward, ghosting her fingers over the controls in front of her.

“Careful,” Garrus chided. “That one will blow a hole through London.”

She reacted as if she’d touched fire, pulling back unharmed fingertips to her lap. It was his laughter, the dual flange and the smile he swore she could hear in it, that made her understand the joke. Her lips wore a smile, too.

“Can you fly this?”

Garrus scoffed. “Not a chance. Skycar, shuttle? Sure. This thing… this thing is a beast unto itself. If you ever meet him—and I’ll deny saying this—he really is the best pilot you’ll ever find. Saved our asses more times than I can count.”

“I’ve never left Earth,” she said with longing. Was that how Shepard felt the first time she left? Earth was so small compared to the rest of the galaxy, or the universe, even. Had it felt like she could finally escape?

“It’s mostly empty,” Garrus replied. “I’ll take you someday, if you’d like.”

It wasn’t a promise, but it was a hint of a future that extended beyond tomorrow.

“Where would we go?”

He hummed in thought and clicked the controls off, plunging them back towards darkness. Charlie vacated her seat and followed behind him as he headed out. “There’s a couple tropical spots if you’re looking for relaxation, but if you’re looking for history…”

“All of them,” she interrupted.

“You bargain like a cop. Now come on, I’m starving.”

 

 

  
She watched him make their dinners afterward, a careful juggling act between a couple different pots and pans as he managed meals for the two of them. It was her turn to return the favor the following night with the help of a couple vids on the extranet and the shortlist of ingredients he’d brought on board. Cooking had never been a hobby of hers, only ever assisting her mother in the kitchen when requested, but the skills were simple enough to manage the directions on her own.

“I would’ve made something if I knew you were hungry,” Garrus said when he’d wandered into the mess.

Charlie placed the plate at the counter and supplied a fork as well. “For you,” she said, then nudged him away from the fridge. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

It was a quizzical stare he gave her at first before his gaze moved to the table top and the plates of his nose shifted almost imperceptibly, sniffing the air. He took the seat.

“I don’t know how it’s supposed to taste,” she started, wringing the towel between her hands. “And I had to make some substitutions.” Garrus took a bite but his reaction gave nothing away, so she started speaking again, a nervous rambling. “There was none of that spice—arkst—arx—I can’t pronounce it, but I looked it up online and someone said it was a lot like garlic and there was a whole lot of that so I used it instead and—“

“It’s great,” he said, cutting her off.

The effect was instantaneous as the tension poured out of her and allowed a smile to creep over her cheeks. “Good,” Charlie said, then again a little quieter. “Good.” The microwave beeped and she took out the small dish with her towel, hissing from the heat as she peeled back the plastic film. A cloud of steam puffed out.

“You made me dinner and you’re eating that?”

“I didn’t have time,” she answered simply and took her seat beside him, digging in. Pasta and chicken, the packaging had said, and it took some time sifting through the greasy noodles to find a piece of protein. It was still better than most things she’d eaten as of late.

With their dishes finally emptied, Garrus took them both before she could move to do so. “The chef doesn’t clean,” he supplied, and set himself up at the sink, wrist deep in sudsy water washing each item from utensils down to the pan with burned on remains of her culinary expedition. Charlie joined despite his protest, standing shoulder to shoulder alongside him, and took her turn at drying while he rinsed.

As she tucked the last dish away back into it’s proper cabinet, Garrus ruffled her hair with a hand. Her father had done that more times than she could ever remember. “Thank you, Charlie.”

“You’re welcome.” They were only a pair of words, but it had taken a deep steadying breath to get her to speak them without giving away more than she’d planned. Thoughts of her father would have to be set aside for another night.

“I’ve been going through some of Shepard’s things,” he started and Charlie turned to him immediately, not wanting to miss a detail. She’d been searching for bits of her left in this ship that had been cleaned clear of her. “There’s a lot I thought you might like to see.”

While she slept where the crew had once lived, Charlie knew he was taking refuge in what had been labeled as the captain’s cabin. Shepard’s quarters. It made sense in hindsight that the two, while sharing a relationship, would share their living space as well. And with Shepard gone… she supposed it made even more sense that he would want to be in the only place left in the galaxy that held tangible evidence of her life lived.

She’d been jealous of being denied access to such a place.

It was a smaller space than she expected when the doors finally opened, and Charlie didn’t wait for Garrus before moving inside. It was also the only place on the ship aside from her bunk that still held any personal possessions at all.

The desk held a terminal and a small stack of data pads, a picture frame of dog tags, even a cracked helmet marked with N7. Model ships filled a glass cabinet and when she was close enough, Charlie could even see bits of dried glue where the plastic pieces met together and had been assembled by hand. A piece of paper with human markings scrawled across it was tucked beneath a mug and she took it into her hands, following the words more so to learn the shape of each letter than any kind of context. She ran a finger over the ink and the barely there indentations pressed into the paper. _This was what her handwriting looked like._

Garrus hung back and she appreciated the chance to get to know her birth mother with what little privacy that could be afforded to her.

The bathroom itself was fairly bare with only a few toiletries tucked away but Charlie took the time with each, breathing in the scent of soap and shampoo and desperately looking for a connection to the woman she never knew. Shepard seemed to favor the scent of rose, while she had always been drawn to vanilla as her own mother had.

“Was she taller than me?” She asked Garrus as she stepped into the bedroom portion of Shepard’s quarters.

He tipped his head from side to side, considering it, then drew his hand to somewhere below his chin. “She was about here which makes you just a little shorter. You’re still growing though, aren’t you?”

A shoulder shrugged to the question. “Do you have pictures?” She’d seen all the ones on the net, but they were all the same in nature. Commander Shepard in armor. Commander Shepard in dress blues. Commander Shepard never smiling, more like a bot than a human.

Garrus’s omni-tool clicked on and so Charlie continued with her efforts. A pair of shoes—simple, sensible, and black—were neatly tucked under the edge of the bed. She slipped her own off and pushed her feet inside. The fit was perfect. She wondered if Shepard had put them there, or if it had been Garrus, tidying up the room for her like she would someday be back. She replaced them to where they’d been, just in case.

“This is the only one of all of us,” Garrus said, approaching her with the image projected from his omni-tool.

There were many faces, some she recognized and a lot she didn’t. Shepard was there, though, right in the middle, tucked in to Garrus’ side. She wore a smile though it wasn’t completely visible, her face in profile as she looked to the turian. Charlie had seen that expression before between her parents when they thought no one else was looking.

She sniffed, feeling the build up of mucus at the back of her throat as her eyes moistened. “I’ve never seen her smiling before.” It was an odd realization. Even in that photo she’d carried with her from New York, Shepard had worn the solemn expression of a lost young girl in over her head.

“That wasn’t something she shared with just anyone,” he answered, then motioned to the picture. “That’s Joker, the pilot I was telling you about. And EDI—“

“A synth?”

“It’s… well she was the AI we had on board the ship who then took over a mech body and now, now she’s been offline since whatever turned the reapers and the geth off.”

“You mean a VI, don’t you?”

His head shook. “She was just about as real as you and me.”

There was a sadness to his voice, not that Garrus ever sounded happy as it was, so she let the topic pass even if she had a million questions pertaining to a genuine artificial intelligence in the flesh—well, metal.

“Liara, Tali, Kaiden…” He went on, ticking their names off as her eyes followed along. “It feels so long ago,” Garrus sighed, then flipped to the next image in sequence. Shepard stood in armor atop a rock with the quarian he’d called Tali, the both of them nearly shadowed by the light of the sun behind them. “That was Rannoch.”

There was a playfulness to the photos he shared with her, something she never expected in the middle of a war and everything else they’d gone through. Aside from the armor and some of the backdrops that were often featured, Shepard looked just like any other girl—or woman, really. If she’d passed her on the street, Charlie didn’t know if she’d even have recognized her at all. The stories, the articles, the photos she’d seen had always made her out to be larger than life. The hero they depended on… but Shepard was just as human as she was.

A video auto-played and Shepard was laughing so hard her face had turned pink, a hiccup overtaking her. She could hear Garrus’ now familiar voice chuckling in the background until the drone capturing the footage centered them both on screen.

“Stop, stop,” Shepard said between gasps of breath, hand waving off the camera. “Glyph, leave me alone.” It cut out just like that, footage only a few seconds long.

“Are there more?” She asked, ignoring the tears that crept down her cheeks.

In another, Shepard was mostly off screen, making idle chit chat as Garrus filmed that cannon he’d shown her a few floors down.

“Are you really taking a video of the fucking Thanix?” Shepard asked, stopping her prior conversation.

“Don’t be jealous. She’s my baby,” he said.

“You’re sick,” but Charlie was sure her words were spoken with a smile.

The next one was filmed from Garrus’ point of view, probably a camera built into that visor he wore, and was a record of a particular dogfight on a planet she didn’t recognize. Shepard ducked down into cover beside him, sweat and dirt and blood across her face.

“You alright?” She asked him, out of breath.

“You’re the one bleeding.”

Without a word she popped back out, firing a series of shots. Garrus gave her cover and she moved ahead, pushing forward. The video went on for some time, a nauseatingly dizzying account with gunshots that rang in her ears. She didn’t dare take her eyes off Shepard however, like somehow if she did the woman there wouldn’t make it through and the past would contort and change.

How had she gone from that girl on Earth with a baby in her arms to a soldier like that?

The last one was more intimate than all the rest, recorded in that very room. Shepard smiled in the direction of the camera, drying the water from her hair. “It’s a wonder you still have space on that thing.”

“I want to remember you like this.”

“Like what? In old pajamas full of holes?”

Barefaced without makeup or dirt, Shepard looked remarkably young.

“You could come up with better memories than this, Garrus,” she teased and picked up a data pad, reading it as she sat on the couch and paying him no mind. The video filmed on, capturing Shepard only idly tapping a finger, running her hand through her hair, a tired yawn leaving her lips.

Garrus cut the video off before it’s time ran to completion and Charlie turned to look at him to beg for more, but her words died in her throat. His plates were tight, mandibles held close.

“She was beautiful,” she offered. “She loved you.”

“That was the last thing I told her. That I loved her.”

It had been the last words Charlie had shared with her mother, too.

Garrus shook his head, hand rubbing at his face. “I can’t believe she had a daughter and she didn’t tell me. I can’t believe no one knew.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she kept quiet, and Garrus filled the silence with his own thoughts.

“We talked about after the war, about being together and adopting our own children and she never once flinched. Never thought to say that she had already had a child and she—you—were out there somewhere. We trusted each other with everything, but she couldn’t trust me with that? I’d have told her if it was me.”

He felt betrayed by a woman not there to defend herself, and somewhere inside her, Charlie felt the need to do so in her place.

“I just think she never mentioned me to anyone after she’d enlisted, to be honest.” It was a painful truth for her to bear. “She was young and alone when I was born, and when she gave me up, I don’t think she considered me hers anymore, if she ever did. At least not anymore than I considered myself to be hers.” There’d been two loving parents to raise her. She’d never wanted for much, even with her birth mother a mystery.

Charlie slipped an arm awkwardly around him. To her surprise, his curled about her, hugging her close to his side.

“I wish I’d known her, though.”

His head dipped in a nod. “Sometimes I look at you and I forgot you’re not her. It takes me a moment to remember she’s gone and it’s like losing her all over again.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” he sighed. “I’m glad you’re here. It’ll take awhile, but eventually I’ll have to get used to the idea that she isn’t coming back this time.”

“Do you think…” Charlie let the thought pass.

“What?”

“If they found her—you said she died the first time and they brought her back. If they found her body, do you think they could do it again?” Even as she spoke the words, it seemed more like something someone disconnected from reality would say. A sci-fi book come to life. “Could we bring her back?”

His arm fell from her shoulder and Charlie saw the way he flexed his hand into a fist.

“It cost a lot of money that first time. Money and two years and a clo—“ Garrus stopped, his head shaking. “After everything I’ve seen, I don’t believe in the word impossible anymore.”

“But?”

“But I wouldn’t do that to her again. It haunted her for a long time afterwards, still did down to the end. It would only be for selfish reasons that I did it and she deserves peace once and for all.”

“Don’t you think she’d want to come back to be with you?” To meet me, she didn’t say, her words clawing and desperate.

“I couldn’t look at her knowing I made that choice for her. I don’t think she’d forgive me for it. I wouldn’t forgive myself for it.”

She nodded because it was the only thing she could do. Garrus rested a hand over her forearm.

“I know that’s not what you want to hear.”

“There’s nothing I want to hear anymore.”

“Last time she died I disappeared from the world and tried to become a vigilante because I was so angry and lost in my grief. This time…” He turned to regard her. “I have you to take care of.”

His words didn’t treat her like a cross to bear, and it was with great relief that he sounded hopeful instead of burdened.  


 

 

Somewhere after days of home cooked meals shared in that mess hall, Garrus set the carnifex she’d carried from New York on the table and pushed it toward her. She’d almost given up hope on seeing it again since that first night in the apartment. For the best, she’d thought, as there were always stories of someone shooting clean through their foot or other body part because they weren’t trained. She quite liked the use of all of her limbs.

“You should learn how to actually use it,” he said, “if you’re going to insist on carrying it.”

He’d made good on his word too, and one day he’d converted that empty cargo bay on the lower level into something of a shooting range with the door opened and lowered. It took two days beyond that before she was ever even allowed to hold the gun after listening to his wisdom on the matter.

“Only draw your weapon if you really intend on using it,” he’d repeated on every occasion he could. “And be damn sure you’re not going to miss.”

They’d taken her weapon apart together, cleaning and greasing all the necessary parts so she would know how to properly care for such a tool. And when they’d done it enough, he’d watched her do it on her own. “Again,” he’d said when it was back together, “do it again. Do it so you can do it without your eyes open.” Somehow, she didn’t doubt his words spoke from experience.

When she’d taken her very first shot, he’d laughed at just how wildly off the mark it was.

“And just how old were you when you first used a gun?” She’d grumbled.

“Ten.”

Charlie shut up after that.

Garrus was patient with her, despite his teasing quips every now and then, and with much practice her aim was a little straighter, her targets a little more full of holes.

“What kind of gun did Shepard use?” Charlie asked one day. To her surprise, Garrus had unpacked a long weapon’s crate and pulled out a rifle. It looked brand new—not from lack of use, she knew, but probably the attention Shepard had paid to it while living that Garrus had taken over for her after death.

“I figured it would’ve been with her…” Wherever she may have ended up.

“Too close quarters for it,” he stated simply.

She knew little details about that last fight now, bits and pieces he’d shared on late nights like how he’d been hurt and she’d sent him away. Like how the cracking of her voice still haunted him before she ran off, never to be seen again. Like how he’d screamed and fought against everyone holding him back once that very bay door in front of them had closed, leaving her behind. _We were cowards_ , he’d told Charlie.

Garrus laid the gun out on the table before them and motioned her close. “It’s heavy, but powerful. The recoil is absolutely wicked, though. If you shot this thing now, you’d bust your shoulder.”

Even with both her hands, it was an unbelievably weighty and bulky gun. To try to carry it into battle with armor and another gun on your hip… Charlie ran her fingertips along the length of it, imagining the woman it belonged to.

“Can you use it?” She asked him.

Garrus scoffed, picking the thing up like it was nothing at all. “If Shepard rises from the dead to yell at me, I won’t be surprised,” he said, walking the length of the bay towards the sun and fresh air. Charlie followed close behind and watched him feed a fresh clip in. “What’s my target?”

“That stone lion on top of the tallest building to the north,” she said, motioning.

“Too easy. Come on, give me a challenge.”

“Well I’m not telling you to shoot a bird who didn’t do a damn—“

“Woah, woah—“ a third voice sounded, and Charlie squinted against the glare of the sun to make him out. He was a stranger, but she recognized him immediately. “What are you doing to my ship, Garrus? I didn’t realize I’d have to be fighting you for squatter’s rights, or I’d have never left.”

“Joker,” she said without thought, and it was like seeing a character from a book come to life. She’d heard the stories of him and seen all the pictures, but she’d never actually expected to see him in the flesh.

His gaze shifted from Garrus to her, his face tensing and eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me Cerberus found another…”

Garrus took a protective step between them, as if shielding her, gun relaxed down at his side. “When did you get back?”

“Yesterday. I thought I’d be the only one with the bright idea to come stay here.” He took an unsteady step closer. “Who is she—who are you?”

Garrus looked from her then back to Jeff before he made his judgement call. “She’s—you’re not going to believe this—she’s Shepard’s daughter.”

Jeff pulled the hat from his head, fingers mussing with his hair before he replaced it. “Somehow, not even close to being the strangest thing I’ve heard in the past week. Month, even.”

He hobbled nearer and Garrus eased up which similarly made her more relaxed. Joker offered her his hand and she did the polite thing, grasping it and giving a shake. His eyes studied her closely, never leaving her face.

“Holy shit. You really are Shepard’s kid, or the second best clone I’ve ever seen.” His mouth gaped ever so slightly, eyes widening as he absorbed the information.

Her head dipped, if only to avoid his gaze as she felt a burning of a blush to her cheeks. Garrus said little things like that from time to time and still she never knew how to react. A thank you, perhaps? Though she’d done nothing to earn such a compliment—and it always was a compliment in some way—but be born and breathe. Mostly she’d opted for silence or a quiet hum of acknowledgement while she mentally tacked on another thing to the long list of similarities between her and her birth mother.

“Charlie,” she said before he could ask.

“Shepard knew about her?” Joker questioned Garrus instead of her. “I mean, she’s not some other weird Cerberus scheme involving a stolen egg and the Illusive Man’s spunk or anything, right?”

Her nose wrinkled at the thought. There were some holes in the information she knew in order to be able to piece his words together correctly.

“Watch your mouth,” Garrus grumbled, sounding exactly like her father once had. He looked to Charlie, a silent question in his eyes and Charlie knew what he asked. She nodded her head to give him permission. “Shepard gave birth to her before she enlisted. She was raised here on Earth by the family that adopted her.”

“Shepard.” Jeff sighed, shaking his head. “Surprising us even after she’s gone. She’s got to be somewhere watching, laughing at us right now.” As if he could see her, he looked on up towards the sky.  
Just in case, she looked too. There was nothing but blue sky dotted with clouds.

They sealed the Normandy up after that, and Charlie never did get to see Shepard’s rifle in action before they’d all retreated back to the lounge on the crew deck. Joker immediately pulled out a bottle of amber liquor stashed in a cabinet and poured himself a glass and Garrus only a finger’s width.

Charlie pushed a third cup towards the bottle and Joker raised an eyebrow, then deferred to Garrus.

“What about it, Dad? Want to start the kid off early? Never too young to foster a crippling alcohol addiction, but hey, at least it’s not red sand.”

The edges of Garrus’ plates around his mouth twitched into something of a smile. “Just a taste,” he decided.

She was served even less than Garrus but it felt like a victory nonetheless. Her parents had afforded her a couple sips of wine and fruity alcoholic blended beverages, just not anything on the harder side. Charlie didn’t drink it first, just swirled it around in her glass as she seated herself on the couch beside Garrus.

“How long have you guys been here?” He asked them both from the nearby armchair he chose for himself.

“A couple… Hmm,” Garrus paused, looking to her, “couple weeks now?”

“Not quite a month.” She answered, drawing the glass to her mouth to take a sip. It burned something fierce and she was embarrassed at her cough as she swallowed it down. “That’s disgusting.” Charlie slid the cup back onto the small table beside the bottle with no intention of finishing her serving.

“You sure you’re Shepard’s?” Jeff asked rhetorically and took her cup to empty it into his own so it didn’t go to waste.

“Have you heard anything from the Alliance about what they’re going to do with the Normandy?” Garrus asked.

“Yeah,” he said, relaxing into his chair a little more, nearly melting into it, “I think they’re giving it to Kaidan, like he’s next in the line of royalty succession for this thing.”

She wasn’t privy to Garrus’ hopes and dreams for the ship, he hadn’t shared them, but she knew him enough now to tell the way he straightened in his seat meant he wasn’t exactly pleased with the answer. It was an Alliance ship now though unlike what the SR-1 had been, even she knew they’d never hand it over to anyone who wasn’t human. Still, her heart felt as though it clenched when she sensed his palpable disappointment.

“You gonna go back to Palaven, then?” Joker asked after a moment.

“I was, but I don’t know now.”

Jeff’s eyes flickered in her direction for only a second, then back to Garrus before he spoke. “I’ve got nothing else anymore, so… my fate kind of lies with this ship indefinitely, I guess. Won’t be the same with that tight ass running it, though. Say goodbye to Taco Tuesdays.”

Despite all the things they had talked of, the future—their futures which were intertwined for the time being—wasn’t one of them. They’d made no real plans. She’d wanted to, of course, wanted to have something concrete that she could rely on, but she’d feared his answers all the same. He’d made her some promises, only what if he didn’t want to keep them anymore? Ideas like that had once plagued her during her first few nights on the ship. Now, she did her best to keep them at bay.

“Where are you from?” Jeff asked suddenly.

“New York.”

She knew the question he wanted to ask next: Are your parents dead? But given the circumstances, she also knew he already had the answer to that.

“You’re a long way from home.”

“I don’t think I even have a home anymore.”

Garrus set a palm to her shoulder, a squeeze of companionship to remind her she wasn’t alone. More and more every day he provided her with comfort whether he knew it or not.

The conversation turned back towards catching up on lost time, even reminiscing about days long past to them, and Charlie kept quiet, preferring to be a fly on the wall to tales of their adventures through the stars. The wildest of vids couldn’t have compared to hearing those stories first hand. Maybe there were some exaggerations and flourishes added in for effect, but it was no matter. The stories were true. It had happened and they’d survived. Some of them, at least.

It was an earlier hour than at which sleep usually came calling to her and her stomach was still empty, but Charlie resisted very little when her eyelids started to feel heavy.

_I’ll only rest my eyes as I listen._

It was a falsehood of course, and only did she wake when the lights of the room had been turned down low. Garrus loomed over her, drawing a blanket over her body that had spread across most of the couch while she slumbered.

She halfheartedly started to rise.

“Stay,” he whispered. “Sleep.” Garrus brushed the hair from her forehead, talon skimming her skin. He moved to go, but hesitated and then leaned down, lightly pressing his forehead to the crown of her head. Close like that, she could even feel the warmth and smell the scent of his skin.

“Goodnight,” he said.

Alone again, Charlie gave in and did as she was told.  
  
  
  
  
  


 


End file.
